This sponsored post is really intriguing because optimism is a trend right now. Have you noticed that everywhere you read, another story is being written on the topic? What Xerox has done is create a website, with a neat and graphically pleasing quiz to score your optimistic emotions. I’m generally optimistic; however, everyone needs a push now and again. (I share personal tips on how I get through negative vibes below.) Once you find your score, you can stick around the site and find tips and resources the experts suggest on bettering your emotional quotient. It’s pretty cool.

The differentiator for this story, though, is that you can take the quiz to see just how optimistic you are at work. Maybe you need to do a bit of work on boosting the happy vibes?

Read on and see what I did to get through a very trying time… [Read more…]

A long time ago, I had an idea for a small-business website. It would be oriented to the backbone of the business, the inside. Much like a blog’s backend, a business has one, too. It’s the toughest thing about being an entrepreneur; yet, it’s the most important.

By now, I’ve been out of the actual formal workforce longer than I’ve been employed inside a company. That trend is happening more and more with the onset of more small businesses vying for self-employment and successful companies. How you ensure that success depends greatly on the resources you tap for the how-to knowledge you need.

I’m going to share a few of those resources in this sponsored post for Cox Blue. It has published a bevy of small-business essentials to keep your SMB growing. I hadn’t known how in-depth Cox Media Group was with its helpfulness for SMBs until I started perusing its site and blog. Its website functions much like a walking encyclopedia of business resources. You can access any of those right here at Cox Blue. [Read more…]

May is the month for Memorial Day, graduation from school, and a week to commemorate small businesses. What’s the common thread among these three?

Everyone knows someone in school. Every American knows someone protecting our country. Small business owners are so prolific and growing daily by the minute.

Entrepreneurs Are A Necessity

So often we small business owners get short shrift for what we accomplish as the engines of prosperity in America. There are days I feel that way, too, alongside the 600 brothers and sisters in small businesses surveyed and reported by Cox Media in the 2014 Small Business Barometer.

Cox Blue is a proponent of small businesses; you can see that theme throughout its website. In this sponsored post, I want to share some results of its study that hit home with me.

A man I’ve had the pleasure of meeting IRL a few times goes by name of Shane Rhyne, and he’s a former public relations executive who has gone comedy.

Shane tells me and us about his transition (yes, gents, he is having a mid-life crisis) from PR to comedy which to him is not exactly a flying leap. If you listen to the whole kit ‘n caboodle, you’ll hear a classic joke from Shane and it cracks me up because I laugh at everyone’s jokes.

Shane also shares about overcoming fears about the monsters that are no longer scary, what it’s like to move in with mom and dad, and how he makes it through his new daily grind. [Read more…]

Google, Apple, Intel and Adobe Systems conspired in the biggest hiring antitrust case the U.S. legal system has ever seen. Please tell me you’ve heard the news. I’m still reeling from the true ramifications of what it means for our allegedly anti-monopolistic economy.

It feels like political parties ran roughshod over the electorate, or the monarchies of Great Britain and the Saudi Arabia launched a war. Alas, it’s merely four giant Fortune 10 publicly traded U.S. corporations named Apple, Google, Intel and Adobe Systems that conspired against their very own employees as if they were chattel.

The four leadership teams agreed behind closed doors the contents of which stayed hidden from 2005 to 2009 to a series of no-recruit agreements. Neither of them could recruit programmers from the other’s company. If they did, it was going to be war as stated by Steve Jobs to Sergey Brin, “If you hire a single one of these people, that means war,” extracted from Bloomberg Businessweek cover story May 5, 2014.[Read more…]